A complete suite or basics and bolt ons – The Cloud ERP and Accounting Software challenge for SME’s

Over the last 3 weeks I have engaged with at least 4 SME organisations in discussions about their future growth and plans for the automation of their business processes. The interesting thing is that there has been a consistent thread running through all these discussions and that relates to one of the drivers of the need to change.

For many growing SMEs managing their cash flow is critical and focusing on selecting solutions that deliver the benefits and functionality they need balanced against the cost of those solutions is always on those business owners and managers minds.

And for good reason – no one wants to spend more than they need to to get the outcomes they want.

However, in each of these scenarios the businesses made a decision to select one of the leading lower cost cloud accounting solutions , which in and of itself is a really nice looking piece of software, easy to set up and get running with and to their credit there is a library of 100’s of solutions that can be bolted on to the package to deliver functionality like project costing, advanced inventory requirements, time tracking, expense management and so on.

Basics and Bolt-Ons or Integrated Solutions – with Cloud ERP, integration delivers the better long term options

But each bolt on adds cost and complexity around integration, data management and synchronization and consistency of experience  or, user interface or look and feel – call it what you will.

So whats the answer -I hear you ask?

Should I go for best of breed in my market or best of suite and then what solution do I choose?

Others might counsel you to go with an entry level solution and plug in the pieces you need…but in the long run, it seems that many businesses that opt for that approach  seem to go back to market within 16 months and look for one integrated solution to meet their needs.

For my money, I am a believer in selecting the software that offers a growth path – not constrained by capability – regardless of the number of bolt-ons that are available.

Being able to transition from an entry level solution through to a full enterprise solution without re-implementing, re-keying data or re-designing systems makes sense…from a cost control and a user experience perspective as well – no need to re-educate and re-deploy each time the business needs additional capabilities or business processes to be managed or automated.

That’s why we chose MYOB Advanced to partner with…maybe you should consider a similar solution for your growing small or midsize business – we can help if you want to discuss the option.

And we are speaking from a position of knowledge – our team have worked with Xero, MYOB, Attache Dynamics GP, Dynamics AX, NAV and SAP Business One just to name a few of the solutions out there – leverage our experience to help you make the best decision for your business and you can rest assured that we will tell you if its not one of the solutions that we offer and can deploy for you.

As the great philosopher of country music Kenny Rogers once sang , you’ve got to know when to hold’em,  know when to fold ’em and we can certainly attest that that is a strategy which has led to Leverage’s track record of happy customers.